Leave Church to Lynch Man — James Reed, Crisfield MD Newspaper Clipping

Crisfield, Md. — A newspaper clipping reports that residents left their church pews on a Sunday morning to participate in the lynching of James Reed, a Black man accused of shooting a policeman named James H. Daugherty.

The headline is not outrage. It is a matter-of-fact account. Worshippers left church. They hanged a man. The paper recorded both in the same breath.

Reed had shot Officer Daugherty after Daugherty arrested a friend of Reed's for selling liquor. Whatever the circumstances, no court was convened. The congregation decided.

This clipping is the companion document to Negro's Body Torn by Mob — the follow-up report in which the same mob returned the next day, exhumed Reed's body, and burned it. Together, these two Receipts document what happened across two days in Crisfield, Maryland, as reported by the local press without editorial condemnation.

This is what the record looks like when impunity is the norm.

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